An Allegory of Life and Death (study)

One of 5 drawings donated by Sir Kenneth Clark to the Ashmolean in 1937.

Kenneth Clark was Keeper of Fine Arts at the Ashmolean from 1931-33. He went on to become the youngest person to be appointed as director of the National Gallery where he remained until after the Second World War in 1945.

Nominally inspired by Lucretius' De rerum natura, Piero di Cosimo's The Forest Fire takes its scientific subject and embellishes it with fantastical creatures from the artist's imagination: Bulls, bears, lions and deer-like creatures with human faces all flee wearily from a fire.

Rubens' portrait of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel dates from about 1629. The Earl was a great collector, and Rubens had painted the earl's wife a few years earlier on a visit to Antwerp. This drawing in pen and ink with a chalk base is unusually informal, reflecting perhaps the comfortable relationship between artist and patron.